The PMI-ACP Exam consists of 120 questions which can be categorized into seven domains. The fourth domain: Domain IV Team Performance is the knowledge about "creating an environment of trust, learning, collaboration, and conflict resolution that promotes team self-organization, enhances relationships among team members, and cultivates a culture of high performance" (source: PMI-ACP Examination Content Outline).
According to the PMI-ACP Exam Content Outline, Domain IV Team Performance consists of 9 tasks grouped within 3 sub-domains:
Below is a collection of the key knowledge addressed in Domain IV Team Performance and the 9 tasks related to the domain:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools - i.e. in Agile project management, the team members and their interaction are considered far more valuable than following pre-defined processes or toolsets.
Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project / Build projects around motivated individuals / Agile processes promote sustainable development / Self-organizing teams / The team reflects on how to become more effective
Team Formation Stages
Tuckman model (Tuckman's stages of group development)
Forming - the team is formed, everyone behaves independently
Storming - disagreements arise between team members
Norming - team members accept each other by emphasizing the team goal
Performing - the team is highly motivated and efficient
Adjourning - tasks completed
At stage 4, the team is considered to be most efficient and best performing. However, not every team goes through every stage of the Tuckman model, some may stay at stage 2 and jump to stage 5 without going through stages 3 and 4.
Building Empowered Teams
Agile teams are, ideally, highly motivated by practicing self-management and self-organization. The organization gives the Agile team a high level of trust.
a team is “a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable” ~Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith
empowered teams are:
self-organizing: since the team has the best knowledge about the project and is in the best position to organize project works
self-directing: the team can make their own decisions, not to be directed by the management
an empowered team is more productive and efficient than teams with top-down decision making
mutual accountability and collective project ownership promote empowerment so that the teamwork as one whole
Tabaka’s model for a high-performing team
self-organization empowered to make decisions belief in vision and success committed team
trust each other
participatory decision making consensus-driven construction disagreement
High Performing Team vs Low Performing Team
maximize performance by clear and realistic goals building trust
open and honest communication – even in case of disputes or conflicts taking ownership, empowered, self-organizing
coaching and mentoring
"Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships."
choose teammates with complementary skills to perform all tasks sense of belonging (identity)
limiting each team to have 12 members or below, break down the team if needed
make decisions through consensus (participatory decision model) full-time, dedicated members
low performing teams are: absence of trust
fear of conflict
lack of commitment avoidance of accountability inattention to results
Team Participation
The whole project team would discuss in detail the requirements of customers through face-to-face communication:
Brainstorming – everyone can voice out their opinions freely without immediate judgment
Innovation games – games are used to engage the team members and customer, e.g. 20/20 Vision, the Apprentice, Buy a Feature, Product Box, Prune the Product Tree (reference: Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play by Luke Hohmann). Parking lot chart – a piece of paper to put important but off-topic issues/queries for later investigation/discussion, e.g. in requirement gathering
Two-way Communication
Agile project management emphasizes feedback as feedback can help reduce misunderstanding and risks and generate better ideas.
Communication must always be two-way, all the parties are allowed to voice out their concerns and points of views
Cross-functional Team
a group of people with different functional expertise working together toward a common goal
often function as self-directed teams
members must be well versed in multi-tasking as they are simultaneously responsible for various functions
Agile Coaching and Mentoring
Coaching and mentoring are needed to help steer the team in the right direction:
coaching– help achieving (personal / organization) goals mentoring – pass on skills, knowledge, and experience
Agile Leadership Style: Servant Leadership
traditional leadership and management emphasizes command-and-control (i.e. Theory X – workers are lazy and need to be monitored closely) servant leaders will lead by serving to ensure the needs of team members are met and roadblocks are cleared (Theory Y – team members are self-motivated)
an Agile servant leader needs to:
protect the team from interference, distractions and interruptions remove impediments to the team’s performance
communicate and re-communicate project vision – maintain a common vision to drive the team to perform
carry food and water – i.e. provide all the resources for the team to perform, including motivating the team, providing training
Important tools/processes/concepts to enhance team communication: information radiator - a communication tool to physically displays key information about the current project status to the Agile team/stakeholders in the work area most visibly and efficiently, e.g. Kanban boards
team space - prefer all team members to be collocated in the same room facing each other for pro-active support, free discussion, open collaboration, tacit knowledge sharing and osmotic communication. If physical co-location is impossible, can make use of virtual co-location tools (e.g. instant messaging, video conferencing, etc.)
Agile tooling
these are tools to promote more effective communication (e.g. reduce roadblocks for collecting, maintaining, and disseminating information) types: low-tech high-touch tools, digital tools
low-tech high-touch tools are preferred because these tools can promote collaboration and communication and everyone knows how to participate
Examples:
co-located teams:
war room and/or a dedicated conference room (walls filled with information radiators like whiteboards, billboards, post-its,
charts, task boards, etc.) distributed teams:
virtual shared space using digital tools (wikis website, instant messaging, online planning poker, card meeting, version control, CASE tools, other Agile tools for building/configuring/deploying deliverables)
osmotic communications for colocated and/or distributed teams team members in a co-located space can overhear conversations/discussions of other members
the team members will be able to extract useful parts from the conversations or to join in if necessary
daily stand-ups
daily stand-ups are a time-boxed (~ 15 minutes) and focused meeting to be held at the same time and in the same place for all team members to do a quick update on the project
stakeholders may attend but are not allowed to talk during the meeting Each member answer the following 3 questions:
What have you done since the last meeting?
What are you planning to do by the next meeting?
What impediments (obstacles) are impacting your work progress?
Motivational Theories
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – five levels of personal needs, from the fundamental at level 1 to the ultimate need at level 5
Physiological
Security
Social
Esteem
Self Actualization
Herzberg’s Hygiene Theory
satisfaction (motivators): such as recognition, achievement, or personal growth
these are key factors to make team members motivated salary is not an effective motivator
dissatisfaction (demotivators): such as bad working conditions, unfairness, etc.
hygiene factors are factors that must be present to avoid
dissatisfaction but do not provide satisfaction, also called KITA factors
e.g. Company policies, supervision, relationship with supervisor and peers, work conditions, salary, status, job security
Expectancy Theory
an individual will decide to behave or act in a certain way because they are motivated to select a specific behavior over other behaviors due to what they expect the result of that selected behavior will be
for a person to be motivated, efforts/performance/outcome must be matched – will only work hard for achievable goals
key elements of Expectancy Theory Expectancy (extra work will be rewarded)
Instrumentality (good results will be rewarded) Valence (the individual’s expected reward)
Productivity
both velocity and throughout can be used to measure the productivity of a team
Team Velocity
Velocity is a capacity planning tool used in Agile project
usually defined as the number of story points that are completed in an iteration
Velocity usually increases gradually over the first few iterations as the team becomes more "performing" but stabilizes afterward as the product becomes more complicated (more bugs, more documentation, more dependencies, etc.)
Cycle Time and Throughput
Cycle time is the time necessary to get a single item of work done from start (idea) to finish (as a shippable product that delivers value)
Cycle time can be reduced by shortening iteration time (breaking down task sizes), limiting Work In Progress, and reducing wastes
Throughput is the number of things that can be done in an iteration
Cycle Time = WIP / Throughput
Defect cycle time is the time between defect injection and defect remediation, the shorter the defect cycle time the better
Emotional Intelligence – people with higher emotional intelligence (E.Q.) can
relate to the feeling of people so that they deal with people issues more effectively
According to Higgs & Dulewicz, emotional intelligence includes seven components
Self-awareness Emotional resilience Motivation Interpersonal sensitivity Influence
Intuitiveness Conscientiousness
Negotiation
collaboration over contract negotiation
communicate with two or more parties to reach an agreement and resolve conflicts
Negotiation strategies
Distributive negotiation: adopt extreme positions initially and work to reach a deal through tactics (the assumption is value is limited, everyone needs to fight for the best value they can get)
Integrative negotiation: work together collaboratively to achieve greater successes by creating more values for a win-win solution (value can be created)
Conflict Resolution
conflict is inevitable and is good for project success when controlled focusing on turning conflicts into a win-win situation, often need to make use of emotional intelligence and active listening
conflict resolution tactics:
Accommodation – identify points of agreement and play down disagreement
Avoidance – ignore the conflict
Compromise – both sides to give up something, a lose-lose situation Forcing – force one side to accept something, a win-lose situation Confronting – open dialogue leading to problem resolution, a win-win situation
Collaboration – work together for a mutually consented solution
The following domains will be published later on with separated articles, STAY TUNED!